Story Photos
 The Herrolds, from right to left, Sylvia, Katherine, Annie and John, work in muddy Willapa Bay tidal flats grabbing clusters of oysters to fill the baskets to fill the tubs. They are then transplanted on fattening beds nearer to the mouth of the bay. Photo by Bill Wagner / Daily News file photo.
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Oyster growers face new threat
Monday, February 4, 2008 8:46 AM PST
By Stephanie Mathieu smathieu@tdn.com
Printable version
E-mail this articleOLYMPIA — Willapa Bay oyster growers were grateful in 2000 when lawmakers approved funding to fix leaky septic systems threatening to pollute the bay and their oyster beds.
But the farmers are back this year, asking lawmakers if they can spend less on septic tanks and more fighting invasive critters harming the Pacific County’s multimillion dollar oyster industry.
A bill sponsored by state
Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, would do that.
Oyster growers have long battled “ghost” shrimp, which burrow into mud beneath oyster beds. The shellfish suffocate as they sink into the thousands of voids the shrimp leave behind. Another threat are small carnivorous snails, known as drills, which eat right though oysters’ shells.
More needs to be done about the problem, Blake said in an interview Thursday. “(Oysters are) just hugely important to Southwest coastal Washington. It’s just a critical part of the economy in the Willapa region.”
House Bill 2823 would alter the formula the state Department of Fish and Wildlife uses to allocate revenues from the state’s sale of oyster seed.
Currently, about 40 percent of that money is earmarked for research, 10 percent goes in the state general fund and 50 percent must be spent on the department’s low-interest loan program for helping homeowners repair failing
septic systems.
Much of the money accumulating in the loan fund for septic repairs is going unused and now totals about $350,000, said Brian Sheldon, a Willapa Bay oyster farmer and estuary advocate. Pacific County has estimated it needs only $100,000 a year to fund septic system repairs, he said.
Under Blake’s bill, Fish and Wildlife still would have to maintain $100,000 to fund for its septic repairs, but it could shift the extra money to fund research into controlling invasive species.
“We’re hoping to use some of the money that is accumulating to fund shellfish research,” said Blake, whose 19th District seat represents parts of Pacific and Cowlitz counties and all of Wahkiakum County.
“We have a huge shrimp problem in Willapa Bay, and actually it’s a problem in many estuaries,” said Sheldon, a board member on the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers and Willapa Grays Harbor Oyster Growers associations. “If we were able to solve the problem, then we’d be solving that problem for the whole West Coast.”
The House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee will decide on Monday whether to move Blake’s bill forward to the full House.
Watch the progress of House Bill 2823 by clicking the “Bill Search” link on the Legislature’s Web site, www.leg.wa.gov.
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